Accra, June 7 GNA- Mr P.C. Appiah-Ofori, Member of Parliament (MP) for Asikuma Odoben-Brakwa, on Wednesday called for a halt to the sale or privatisation of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR).

He asked Ghanaians, especially MPs and other well-meaning people, to join in the opposition to the sale of TOR since it was "the hen that lays Ghana's golden eggs".

A statement Mr Appiah-Ofori sent to The President, The Speaker, The Majority and Minority Leaders of Parliament and made available to government whether formed by the NPP, NDC, PNC, CPP or any new political party could bring improved quality of life to the people of Ghana=".

It said: 'TOR is a monopolist and considering the fact that without TOR or petroleum products, the economy of Ghana would grind to a halt overnight, then until more refineries are established in Ghana to break the monopoly of TOR, it is not in the best interest of Ghana for the Government to cease to exercise control over TOR.'

Demand for TOR's products such as aviation kerosene for aircraft; marine gas oil for ships; diesel and petrol for vehicles for internal road transportation and for electricity generation by both the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and manufacturing companies; pre-mix fuel for traditional fishermen, were inelastic.

The statement said "if TOR ceases to be a State owned company, the Government would not be able to easily impose taxes and levies on petroleum products".

If that happened, the Government 93shall lose steady sources of revenues and this will impair government's development and growth agenda for Ghana.

"The effect of this is that the people of Ghana would suffer unbearable hardships resulting, sometime, in strikes and this would make the Government unpopular and impair the chances of New Patriotic Party (NPP) to retain power."

The statement also said Ghana had not benefited from the privatisation of Ghana Telecommunication Limited and some other similar State owned enterprises as the new owners of some of such privatised State owned enterprises engaged in capital flight to the detriment of the national economy.

It said; 93it was not unlikely that some workers with TOR would lose their jobs when the company was privatised and that would exacerbate the unemployment problems in the country, which the Government was grappling with.

"The Government should make strenuous effort to identify the causes and apparent chronic problems facing TOR and find lasting solutions to them."

It said TOR should not be an exception to making profits if it wanted to remain in business since it was universally acknowledged that a company should at times recover its total cost of production and realise reasonable profits.

Total cost of production of any company might be categorized into two: normal and abnormal costs, it said.

While normal costs are unavoidable, abnormal costs are avoidable. Abnormal costs result from inefficiencies; stealing; embezzlement; inflation of contract sums; corruption; fraudulent practices and a host of other malpractices.

It said the operations of TOR had from time immemorial been characterized by abnormal costs, which were passed on to consumers through high prices of petroleum products and to the Government, which then spent scarce resources to bail the company out of the predicament in which it consequently found itself.

The statement said the way out was for conscious effort to be made to isolate and subsequently eliminate abnormal costs from the Company's operations completely.

"I had a meeting with the Managing Director of TOR in his office on May 10, 2006 in this direction. I propose that the Government appoints a committee to carry out such an exercise. Alternatively, Parliament should appoint an ad-hoc committee to look into the operations of TOR and report back to Parliament with a view to finding a lasting solution to TOR's Herculean problems" he said.

The statement said corrupt practices abound in the public services and in the private sector and if the Government made deliberate efforts to combat the corrupt practices it would make savings and access more funds to support TOR where necessary.

It said at the request of the Revenue Agencies Governing Board of the Ministry of Finance, he investigated or audited certain private companies to ascertain their compliance with their VAT, excise duty and sometimes corporate tax obligations to the State and it found that three companies investigated had manipulated their operations, sales and accounting records and succeeded in appropriation of 80 billion cedis of VAT, excise duty and corporate tax due to the Government.

The statement said assuming that 1,000 companies in Ghana engaged in the same fraudulent practices and at the same rate, the State would have lost 80 trillion cedis which could not only finance the Government borrowing money as it was doing yearly but also assist the Government to support TOR without any difficulty.